Inspira AI, a company developing AI cognitive frameworks, has released a paper that maps out significant job losses in the white-collar sector. Dr. Jo Ann Oravec, a professor at University of Wisconsin and the author of Good Robot Bad Robot, contributed to the paper.
The paper predicts that nine out of 10 white collar employees will be out of work by 2045, with no new jobs to replace them. In just over two decades, forecasts suggest the world will experience swift and extensive changes in social structures and societal norms, leading to a significant transformation globally.
The newly released paper makes the case that automation of office work will take place far faster and broadly than jobs that require manual labor. The argument is that office work requires only the automation of computer processes, while manual labor requires expensive and hard-to-build robots. Automating office work is easier and less costly, and thus office jobs will be impacted more extensively.
Dr. Jo Ann Oravec, a professor at University of Wisconsin, is a contributor to the paper and the author of Good Robot Bad Robot (Springer Nature, 2022). She commented, “predictions about technological futures can never be entirely correct, but Inspira’s efforts are based on solid thinking and will certainly stimulate a new level of insight in business, academics, and public policy.”
Inspira CEO, Izzy Traub, commented on the data, “There has been a lot of public chatter about AI-related job losses forecasted in the 40-50% range. These forecasts take into account new jobs that will be created. What is not taken into consideration is that AI will also take most of these new jobs as well. The job displacement predictions are skewed far too low, at least for knowledge work. The scary truth is that AI will result in massive job losses for office workers, far more extensive than people realize.”
